Thursday, June 07, 2012

successful dividend investors

Dividend investing is as sexy as watching paint dry on the wall.
Defining an entry criteria that selects quality dividend stocks with
rising dividends over time and then patiently reinvesting these
dividends while sitting on your hands is not exciting.

I did some research and uncovered several sucessful successful dividend investors, whose stories provide reassurance that the traits of successful dividend investing I outlined in a previous post are indeed accurate.

Anne Scheiber turned a $5,000 investment in 1944 into $22 million
by the time of her death at the age of 101 in 1995. Anne Scheiber worked
as an IRS auditor for 23 years, never earning more than $3150/year. The
one important lesson she learned auditing tax returns was that the
surest way to become rich in America is by accumulating stocks. [8/2/14]

Grace Groner,
who turned a small $180 investment in 1935 into $7 million by the time
of her death in 2010. Ms Groner, who worked as a secretary at Abbott
Laboratories for 43 years invested $180 in 3 shares of Abbott Laboratories (ABT) in 1935. She then simply reinvested the dividends for the next 75 years. She never sold, but just held on to her shares.

The third dividend investor is Warren Buffett, the Oracle of Omaha himself. In a previous article,
I have outlined the reasoning behind my belief that Buffett is a closet
dividend investor. He explicitly noted in his 2009 letter that "the
best businesses by far for owners continue to be those that have high
returns on capital and that require little incremental investment to
grow".